SHSAT explained: the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test for New York City's eight testing specialized high schools, the two sections of 50 questions in 180 minutes, the digital computer-adaptive format since 2025, how it is scored, the lowest qualifying scores for 2026 admissions by school, the dates, who can take it, and how to prepare

The SHSAT decides more with a single number than any other test an American thirteen-year-old sits: eight public high schools, among the most selective in the country, admit by this score and nothing else. NYC Public Schools publishes everything a family needs about it, from the content to the last admitted score at each school, and this page follows those pages.

Download the SHSAT sheet (PDF) (the two sections and what they cover, the format and scoring, the 2026 cutoff scores by school, the dates and a preparation planner; two pages, free).

Who can take it, and for what

The two sections

Standard test time is 180 minutes for both sections together; the student chooses which section to begin with and how to divide the time. English language learners and eligible former ELLs get extended time and other accommodations, and students with IEPs or 504 plans get those on their plans.

The digital, adaptive format

Since fall 2025 the SHSAT is a computer-adaptive test. Every question carries a difficulty parameter on one scale; after each response (or set of responses on a passage) the computer updates its estimate of the student's performance and selects what comes next, so no two students see the same test. Each section also carries ten unscored field-test items that do not affect the adaptation. A student must answer each question to move on; within a passage set the answers can be changed until the set is submitted. Universal tools such as zoom, highlighting and note-taking are built in.

How it is scored, and how offers are made

At the end of the test the performance score on each section is transformed, by the same standardisation process as in earlier years, into a scaled score, and the two scaled scores are added to make the composite used for ranking. There is no penalty for a wrong answer.

Offers are then made in descending order of composite score against the student's ranked list: the highest scorer receives an offer to their first choice, the next highest to their first choice, and so on; when a school fills, the next student who listed it first receives their second choice, and so on down. The last score admitted to each school is therefore not a cutoff set in advance but the result of that year's scores, seats and preferences, and NYC Public Schools publishes it afterwards:

The 10th-grade entry cutoffs (for first-time 9th graders) are published on the same page and are higher at most schools. A composite in the 560s has put a student at Stuyvesant for several years; the gap of about 65 points between the highest and lowest lines is the room in which a student's ranked choices matter.

The Discovery program. Each testing school reserves seats for the Discovery program, which admits disadvantaged students who scored just below the school's cutoff after a summer programme; eligibility rests on the family's and the school's circumstances, and the DREAM program prepares eligible 6th and 7th graders for the test. Both are described on the Specialized High Schools enrollment page.

What a student needs

The mathematics is grade 7 and 8 content taken seriously: ratios and proportions, integer and rational-number operations, expressions and linear equations and inequalities, basic statistics and probability, and geometry (angles, area, volume, the Pythagorean theorem). The ELA is close reading of passages and the editing of paragraphs for grammar, precision and logic. The NYC Guide to the SHSAT, free from NYC Public Schools, has sample questions with explanations and a sample of the technology-enhanced items, and the 2024-25 Student Handbook has two full paper-era sample tests whose content is still the content.

How to prepare

1. Start with the free official material: the NYC Guide and the Handbook's sample tests, timed, to find the section and the topics that cost most.
2. Mathematics first. It is the section where a few weeks of work moves the most; close the gaps in proportions, equations and geometry before practising speed.
3. ELA from editing. Revising and editing rewards knowing a short list of rules (sentence boundaries, agreement, modifiers, transitions, concision); reading comprehension rewards reading widely and asking what each paragraph is for.
4. Practise the adaptive habit: there is no skipping, so commit to each answer, and no penalty, so never leave one blank.
5. Rank the schools honestly. The ranking does not affect the score; it only decides where a given score lands.

The private-school counterparts are the SSAT and the ISEE, and the Catholic schools' HSPT; all three are different tests with different scoring rules.

Download the SHSAT sheet (PDF) (the sections, the format, the cutoffs, the dates and the planner; two pages, free).

Where to get help

A 1-on-1 online class with a tutor who holds a master's degree and teaches the US curriculum from Grade 1 number work to AP Calculus, chemistry and physics, at 7 am before school, after 4 pm and on weekend mornings, US time, for US$10 to $13 an hour: the report read together in the free 30-minute first class, the domain or the skill the score is really pointing at found, and the term spent on exactly that, with the method written out the way the school marks it. How online tutoring from India to the USA works, or the 1-on-1 online tutoring page.

Sources: NYC Public Schools, Specialized High School Admissions Test (the sole-factor rule and the eight schools; the two sections of 50 questions, the content list, the formats and the 180 minutes; the digital administration on DOE computers; the adaptive scoring with ten field-test items per section; scaled scores added to a composite; accommodations; the Test View); NYC Public Schools, Specialized High Schools (eligibility; the 2026 test dates and sites by district; how offers are made in descending score order with preferences; the lowest qualifying SHSAT scores for 2026 admissions by school; the DREAM and Discovery programs; LaGuardia's audition); NYC Public Schools, 2024-2025 Specialized High Schools Student Handbook (no penalty for wrong answers; the sample tests). Fetched 11 November 2026.

Questions parents ask

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